UK School Using Biometric Fingerprint Data to Make Sure Kids Eat ‘Healthy Diet’

The use of biometrics on children in various areas of the school setting, from swiping a finger to check out a library book or scanning a palm to purchase a lunch is sadly not new.

What is new is what a headteacher recently told parents to justify the use of fingerprint scans in the lunchroom at Redhill School in Stourbridge, England.

Via EAGNews.org:

“We are aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is better for parents because they don’t have to provide children with lunch money every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces waiting times.

“We will also be able to monitor what children are buying to make sure they are eating a healthy diet.”

Wait. Back up a sec. Really?

Tracking each child via fingerprint to database and examine their lunch choices and determine whether they can be considered part of a “healthy” diet, huh?

How does that work? Based on whose opinion? And to what end?? For what consequences???

As Daisy Luther over at The Organic Prepper reported last November, a mother in Manitoba, Canada was fined $10 when the school decided her child’s home-brought lunch lacked a “grain.” The lunch contained meat, potatoes, carrots, milk and an orange, but that simply was not deemed healthy enough, so the school supplemented the lunch with Ritz crackers for ten bucks. The miffed mom wrote:

[If the lunch contained] “microwave Kraft Dinner and a hot dog, a package of fruit twists, a Cheestring, and a juice box” those lunches would have sailed right through this idiocy. But her whole food, homemade lunches? They lacked Ritz Crackers. So what say you? Have you come across a more inane school lunch policy? Because I sure haven’t. (source)

It should go without saying, but Ritz crackers aren’t typically considered the height of nutrition. Luther continued:

Ritz Crackers, of $5 add-on fame, contain no fiber, no protein, and no vitamins, but this ticks the boxes required by the government of the province of Manitoba?

This leads to the question, “What do Ritz Crackers contain?” I’m glad you asked.

Wow – what parent could object to these GMO-laden “grains”? Loaded with High Fructose Corn Syrup (a GMO-sourced poison linked to obesity, diabetes, and containing unregulated toxic contaminants), partially hydrogenated oils (this is a trans fat and currently on the verge of becoming a banned ingredient in the US), sugar (because HFCS just doesn’t make it sweet enough), and chemicals, it’s a great addition to a healthy lunch…please note my sarcasm.

Aside from the creepy mark of the beast implications of normalizing young children who don’t know any better to these biometric programs, it’s a well-known fact that forcing children to adhere to a government-mandated diet does not automatically equal anything remotely considered healthy. Just consider the ramifications were a set up like this to be implemented here stateside with the government-subsidized food included in Michelle Obama’s “death row” school lunch program.

Beyond that, though, who is monitoring these children’s diets? What gives that person the credentials? What happens if the child doesn’t pick the right foods? Does an alarm go off in the computer system? Does someone step in and force them to eat something else? Where does this end? (Editor’s note: Learn more about the politics of lunch)

The greater potential for the abuse of power is…unappetizing, to say the least.

Recommended Reading

Food Fight!: The Battle over the American Lunch in Schools And the Workplace

Prying Eyes: Privacy in the Twenty-First Century (Exceptional Social Studies Titles for Upper Grades)

Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance (Critical Cultural Communication)